pennyspoetryfandomcom-20200214-history
Joseph Ceravolo
Joseph Ceravolo (April 22, 1934 - September 4, 1988) was an American poet associated with the 2nd generation of the New York School. Life Ceravolo was born in Queens, New York City, into a family of Italian immigrants. He studied writing under Kenneth Koch at the New School for Social Research. In addition to his career as a poet, Ceravolo worked as a civil engineer. He began writing poetry while stationed in Germany in the late 1950s. He lived much of his life in New Jersey. Ceravolo had a wife, Rosemary, and three children, Paul, James, and Anita. He died in 1988 due to bile duct cancer. Writing Ceravolo is associated with the second generation of the New York School (which includes writers such as Bernadette Mayer, Bill Berkson, Ron Padgett, Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh). Although Ceravolo’s work shares some of the same warmth and immediacy that typifies some of the other New York School Second Generation, his work is less prone to use conversational language and is often less directly humorous than much New York School writing. Influences on Ceravolo’s poetry include Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams and E.E. Cummings, as well as Asian and Native American poetry. Many of Ceravolo’s poems are marked by distorted syntax, elisions, juxtaposition and fragments (a trait he shares with Clark Coolidge, a writer also sometimes associated with the second generation of the New York School) resulting in poems that surprise with their refracted meanings and misdirections. The structure and shape of Ceravolo’s poetry changed over the course of his career: the poems of one of Ceravolo’s early books, Fits of Dawn, are characterized by a dense, relentless gush of words; Ceravolo’s poems (such as in Spring in this World of Poor Mutts) then increasingly experiment with spacing and twists added by conjunction and preposition; poems in Ceravolo’s later books tend to be more direct and lyrical, although parataxis is still prevalent. Ceravolo’s poems often focus on the natural world, as opposed to the social world. The titles of almost all of his books contain a reference to natural phenomena (Fits of Dawn, W''ild Flowers Out of Gas'', Spring In This World of Poor Mutts, Millennium Dust) and the same is true of the titles of his individual poems. Sometimes simple, sometimes elliptical, Ceravolo’s poems shortcut conventional description, and as Kenneth Koch says they become almost as physical as the natural world encountered in them. An example is the poem “Drunken Winter”. An enthusiasm can be found in much of Ceravolo’s work, exemplified by use of imperative, address and exclamation, and aided by his syntactical abstraction. A good example of this is found in his poem “The Book of Wild Flowers”. Even where Ceravolo’s poems are “quiet”, they possess an intensity and openness; as is the case in this passage from his poem “Both Close by Me, Both”. Most of Ceravolo’s work is out of print and his popularity is limited to the community of writers. As Charles North writes “Ceravolo’s importance to American poetry over the past 30 years is still largely a secret.” Recognition His 1968 collection Spring in this World of Poor Mutts won the inaugural Frank O'Hara Award, "intended to encourage the writing of good new experimental poetry."Joseph Ceravolo 1934-1988, Poetry Foundation. Web, May 29, 2014. Publications Poetry *''Fits of Dawn'' (edited by Ted Berrigan). C Press, 1965.. *''Wild Flowers Out of Gas''. New York: Tibor de Nagy Editions, 1967. *''Spring In This World of Poor Mutts''. New York: Frank O'Hara Foundation / Columbia University Press, 1968. *''INRI''. Putnam Valley, CA: Swollen Magpie Press, 1979. *''Transmigration Solo''. West Branch, IA: Toothpaste Press, 1979. *''Millennium Dust''. New York: Kulchur Foundation, 1982. *''The Green Lake Is Awake: Selected poems'' (edited by Larry Fagin et al; introduction by Kenneth Koch). Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 1994. *''Collected Poems'' (edited by Rosemary Ceravolo & Parker Smathers). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Joseph Ceravolo, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, May 29, 2014. See also *New York School poets *List of U.S. poets References External links ;Poems * Joseph Ceravolo 1934-1988 at the Poetry Foundation * Joseph Ceravolo @ EPC (Electronic Poetry Center) * Joseph Ceravolo: Poems ;Audio / video * Joseph Ceravolo at PennSound * Joseph Ceravolo at YouTube ;Books *Joseph Ceravolo at Amazon.com ;About * Joseph Ceravolo at the PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry] Blog. *Joseph Ceravolo Official website. *The Joseph Ceravolo Project weblog. Category:1934 births Category:1988 deaths Category:American poets Category:New York School poets Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:The New School alumni Category:People from New York City Category:American engineers